How long would whale lifespans be if whales had the same level of medical care as humans? Humans today regular live well beyond our natural lifespans, if we were all dying at 30 cancer probably wouldn’t be much of an issue
A useful corrective, but perhaps also misleading. Humans didn't peacefully keel over at 60, let alone 30, that's true. And death before 20 was indeed so horrifyingly common that it couldn't help but bias the average hard. But mortality was higher at every age, be it from disease, injury, or childbirth. A person of the past would have understood a death at 40 or 50 to be young, but not all that unusual. Most people would know quite a few who died in that range.
Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow
for they quickly pass, and we fly away
Pre-industrial societies have much higher infant mortality but for those who live to adulthood their lifespans are not that much shorter than ours. If you survived early childhood, your odds of getting into your 60s would be pretty good, and plenty of people made it into their 70s.
And many whales die of what we would consider old age - typically they get weaker and weaker as they grow old until they reach a point where they are unable to consistently swim to the surface for air, and thus drown. Pretty much what you'd expect if you flooded a nursing home.
